Keeping my blog for nearly two months now, and after having taken quite many pictures and writing some stories, I accidentally found out about a new way of photography. You basically fix of what you see in a few lines and a few words. It is called Haiku and can be seen as photography in words.

The Discovery
While being a little wasted and stumbling at night on the streets, a fellow wasted person and me almost stood still for nearly two minutes at some brick in the street, encrypted with some none-sense making sentences. Of course we remained in denial of our stupid ness and decided this was the effect of the alcohol. We continued our crawl towards the car and it only took us a few seconds to completely forget about the whole brick.

The Benefactors
Some days after, when this very same person and me met each other again, she showed me a text message on her phone, that seemed to be a copy of the brick. At this point (completely sober) the sentences still didn’t make sense to us at all. And still being in denial, we decided we should rewrite the sentences at this brick and do all the drunk people, walking down the same street and reading the same brick, a favor.

The Revelation
Finally home and ready to write some of the best and smooth sentences ever. But before I even started writing, a little research about the other text learned us that we had to do here with some sort of Japanese poetry. So, no smooth version of our brick stories….

A Haiku poem consist of respectively 5, 7 and 5 syllables in three lines. The lines have to be independent of each other, but enrich the understanding of the other. Also every Haiku has to have a seasonal theme. For example, cherry blossoms indicate spring, snow indicate winter, and mosquitoes indicate summer, but the season word isn’t always that obvious (source: Haiku for People and the Haiku Notebook).

Last week I had the honor of taking pictures of the upcoming model Cailu. We had talked about it before, but one of the conditions was that the sun had to shine. Since this is something quite rare in Holland and totally unpredictable, the photo session would have to be quite spontaneous.

But last Thursday this day had come! Full blue sky and a nice cool breeze to keep us Dutch people from complaining about the high temperatures. You can see a selection of the shoot @ The Dutch Grapes Gallery.

Coffee, “a great way to start the day with”, “it keeps you awake” or “it is a great conversation starter” are all reasons why to drink coffee. But this is not the only reason why people drink coffee. In the movie Coffee and Cigarettes Steven Wright likes to drink coffee before to go to bed, so he can dream at amazing speeds. Or take this comparison of why to prefer coffee above women. And if you are still not convinced, coffee is even good for your health! But most likely whenever people ask you to drink coffee with them, you should consider the first three options – either they think you look sleepy or they want to do business with you. The last option of course explains why Starbucks is such a success in the US, and why providing wireless internet in all the Starbucks stores was such a logical step to take.

Uhm.. Where was I going again with this story? Ah yes!

I forgot to take a coffee this morning! I found myself in the city, standing somewhere on a small wall together with Indah, taking pictures of the annual FFWD Dance Parade. And even though it had been a long night and an early morning, I remained glued on that very wall for nearly two hours without a drop of coffee! It felt bad not starting the day in the right way, and not socializing with the person I was with. Guess that all I want to say is – Indah, Next time we have to start with coffee!

Four wedding invitations for the next four months. One at lake Como (Italy), one in Prague (Czech Republic), one in Antwerp (Belgium) and this week a wedding in Amsterdam (Netherlands).

Last weekend I went to Copenhagen to visit a friend from my study exchange period from about five years ago. He is actually from the Netherlands, but remains in Copenhagen as an expatriate for two years. While we (four of us) planned our trip to Copenhagen, more and more people from the exchange period decided to join us and so our little escape of the daily life became a little reunion in the North. We ended up with twelve persons with origins from – Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Italy, Sweden, Austria, and the Netherlands. A great weekend that left me with a temporarily hangover (even though the alcohol is outrageous expensive) and three wedding invitations (Anyone willing to sponsor me, so I can be present at all the weddings to come, can write me personally. All donations will be fully apreciated, handled with discretion and always be remembered).

I can’t show you a lot of pictures of Copenhagen though, due the bad weather and the short days we had…

I have no idea how Flickr became a standard that fast, but since Yahoo! bought the company, it has been going very well with Flickr. Already one of the largest photo databases on the internet with literally millions of images.

So, don’t be surprised if the verb ‘flickring’ becomes the standard when searching for images, as googling became the standard for finding webpages. Of course you can search on the site itself, but the Flickr Postcard Browser is much more fun to use.

Well, maybe no rivals to me, but maybe one day colleagues. But until that day comes I will just enjoy their world of photography;) In this post I made a small collection of some great sites with great photographers. Probably this is going to be a sticky post where I will continuously add new links to. For that reason I will move this post to the navigation side later on. Sit back and have fun and be amazed while browsing their world of photography!

A joint website of photographers is Marge Casey. Many talented photographers can be found here with great pictures. Worth taking a look at! Jill Greenberg has a wonderful site that uses the full screen to show the pictures and experience the pictures as they should be experienced. Dirk Lambreachts shows his pictures in a kinda annoying navigation, but well worth taking a look at. Douglas Fisher an artist in photography and in retouching the pictures. On his website he shows how different elements are being added to his pictures and how he creates in this way an imaginary world that cannot be distinct from real. Albrecht Gerlach is from Brazil and that can be seen from his portfolio. Beautiful warm settings with beautiful people from South America. Sean Kennedy Santos has done a lot of photography for many big brands around the globe (to name a few, Diesel, Sony, etc). His eccentric way of photography distinct him from the vast majority. Carl de Keyzer welcomes his web guests with a pleasant one-minute movie of stills. It gives a great overview of what he has done. Once inside the website, the fast and easy to use navigation guides you trough all his other work. Antoine Verglas a top photographer from French origin. Born in Paris and moved to New York to make his debut as photographer with a documentary of countries top models. Nowadays he shoots for magazines as Elle, Vogue, GQ, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated. Another amazing photographer is Andrew Eccles. He is the favourite for many celebrities, and I have to agree with them! The site navigation is a bit old fashioned, but the photos are breath taking! Another great photographer I like because of his lifestyle pictures is Steven Lippman.

I can’t remember how long ago, but it must have been years ago (please don’t think I am that old, just think that I like to exaggerate a little) when I got that scanner for my birthday (thank you roommates). And ever since, I have been thinking about digitalizing and retouching all my pictures. Well, as you can see in my collection (notice the scratches) there are about four or so pictures that I digitalized since then. Call me lazy – but I would rather call it prioritizing:)

Anyway, today I decided it became time to make a start. So, hopefully over the next weeks you will be able to see some old pictures that might be fun or worth looking at. If you don’t see appearing anything, then I must have forgotten it already or perhaps decided to prioritize again! Today I started with Gigi – it was just a day at the beach and making some snap shots afterwards.